LISTING FREAK

LISTING FREAK

MAKING LISTS WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY

Some will say that listing is cool, for some it will suck. Anyway, as it does not hurt anyone and can make you happy more than Snowman... Especially that I have recently noticed, talking to a lot of younger bands coming from all over, that they have little or no knowledge of old hardcore punk and old school bands. Now, this is sad. All the more so because we are living in the dark ages of the Internet and all the unknown, unidentified small bits of information can easily be isolated, absorbed and digested.

At, first it struck me as rather odd. But on second thought, I think it is pretty understandable. A couple of times I talked to young hardcore musicians, who told me they loved the music. Still, we could not have a lengthy conversation as they had no poison idea about the origin of this incredible genre. Then I realized that some of them were about 20 or younger, which means that when they were born, hardcore punk was almost 20 years OLD and by some considered a dying wreck. Punk is well over 40 now, still kicking but in the late 70s was declared dead.

Well, it is always good to know where you are coming from. Music did not begin with screamo hardcore or metalcore. If these bands can see or hear anything, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. The great pioneers who started punk and then hardcore. Even they looked back and drew from the experience and all inventions of the artists before.

There would be no screamo without e.g. Dead Kennedys or Black Flag or Minutemen or Bad Brains. And those great bands appeared because they had heard The Ramones, The Clash and the Sex Pistols. And those were influenced by lots of earlier rock acts, like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones or even Doo-wop groups, who in turn followed Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley or Jerry Lee Lewis. And those guys were fascinated by the likes of T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon.

And in the beginning there was the one and only Robert Johnson. Let there be rock! Punk rock, that is. Oops, I mean hardcore.